Wiz Khalifa has been putting out music since 2005, but it wasn't until 2010 that he had his major breakthrough with Kush & OJ, a mixtape that celebrates its fifth anniversary today. In an interview with MTV, Wiz spoke of the mixtape being viewed as "his classic," a title he had yearned for since getting into rap.
"I was always a fan of classic hip-hop like Nas, Jay Z and Biggie, Reasonable Doubt, Illmatic and Ready To Die,” he recalled. “So it’s like, ‘How do you make that classic? How do you get your classic album?”
Khalifa then explained that the mixtape came together through establishing his own sound and really focusing on perfecting that particular vibe. “It was sort of me coming to change what I had seen and what I knew there was a void in the game of,” he said. “That was that ride and smokin’ music, that chillin’, relaxin’ shit that I do on the everyday anyway. That was my angle when I did that.”
At this point, he's well aware that fans consider it to be his definitive project. “It’s pretty cool that everybody labels that as my classic,” he shared. “I put a lot of time and energy into it. To know that it came off exactly how I wanted it to and put me where I wanted to be in my career was really dope.”
Watch the full interview and revisit the tape below.
